I first wrote this eight years ago, and I share it every year during Anti-Bullying Week. I could write something else, but it took some emotional energy to write the first time and I’m not really up for putting myself through that again.

Let’s not put up with anyone being treated like this, whether at school, in the workplace or within politics. It’s important that anyone in any sort of leadership role in any organisation has the skills to recognise and intervene to stop bullying and support those affected by it. It casts a very long shadow and destroys lives. Its costs are massive in terms of wellbeing. Also, if you are bothered about the money and the economy, happier people are more productive. It’s entirely preventable and we should do all we can to eradicate it.

I’ve been procrastinating like anything to avoid writing this post because although I know the events I’m going to describe took place a long time ago, they cast a long shadow. Their stranglehold on my life is long gone, but the memories are not. I might have teased my sister for posting something inane on my Facebook wall a while ago when she has important work she needs to do, but how would I know if I hadn’t similarly been wasting time.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a very long time, but now is probably the right time. When Stephen wrote so movingly about how his experiences of homophobic bullying had almost led him to the brink of suicide, I thought about telling my story too. His account of standing on the breakwater as a 17 year old brought vividly to my mind those dark occasions I’d stood far above the sea and contemplated jumping as a young teenager myself. I wasn’t bullied for homophobic reasons. In fact, it was made very clear to me that no man, woman or even beast would ever find me attractive.

The bullying started in earnest when I went to secondary school. I was in a very dark place as a 12 year old. This isn’t the right place to explain why but when I experienced those feelings again in later life, the doctor called it Depression. To add to that, we’d moved so I was far away from the emotional bedrocks my wonderful grannies provided. I was vulnerable, alone and, let’s be honest, not very likeable. I certainly didn’t like myself much anyway.

During the first three years of high school, I was primarily known by two names, neither of which had been given to me by my parents. In English one day in first year, we were taking it in turns to read out a scene from a play. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what it was but as fate would have it, the line I had to read was “I want a yak.” Quick as a flash, the boy in front of me yelled out “I always thought you were one……” Cue the entire class, including the teacher, to collapse in laughter. That spread like wildfire, and before long it became my name to the entire pupil body.

If we’d had Google images then, I might have discovered pretty quickly that yaks are really kind of cute, but I never really saw it that way at the time and I really don’t think that the name was an affectionate one.

The other name came from the fact that, yes, I do have weird eyes. For that reason, people would hiss like a cat when they saw me coming, and spit out “Cat’s Eyes” as I passed.

I’m sure that doesn’t sound like much, but when you hear one or other of those things round every corner every day, you do feel less than human.

I became adept at varying my route to and from school to try to avoid the bullies who were there to pull my hair, or steal my stuff or point, or laugh, or kick or trip me up. They liked to mix it up a bit so I never really knew what I was walking into. I know it’s all quite low level, but it wore me down. I lived in perpetual fear and carrying that around everywhere was exhausting.

And then there was the damage or loss to property. One day I’d hung a light blue jacket on the back of my seat. By the end of the lesson, it was covered in dark ink splodges. Despite the girl behind’s fingers being covered in ink, the school could do nothing because nobody had seen her do it.

It seemed at times like most of the teachers turned a blind eye to what was going on. Sometimes, it even felt like they were joining in. I remember lining up at the end of a class one day and one person called me a name. The teacher then repeated that name at me, legitimising what the bully had said, giving them a real boost and making me feel like there really was nobody who thought I was any good whatsoever.

I dealt with it by escaping into a bit of a dream world, from which some of my friends today would say I am yet to fully emerge, given my potential for being utterly scatty and unobservant. I had to wake up every morning though – and the first sensation was always fear induced nausea, before I even opened my eyes, as I wondered what new blow this day would bring. It was like a battle was going on inside me – most of me felt that I was completely worthless and deserved all I got, while there was a tiny seed of entirely irrational optimism which kept me going and ultimately held me back from a messy end on the rocks.

Things changed a bit in third year. I made some really good friends. If it hadn’t been for Karen, Diana, Angie and two Morags, I probably would have sunk into an irretrievable despair. Sure, people still did the Yak and Cat’s Eyes things round a fair few corners, but it became more bearable when I had people who affectionately thought I was a bit mad but put up with me anyway.

The long term effects, though , stayed with me for a good 15 years. I wonder if things would have been different if I’d had better support at school. If there had been intervention to both deal with the bullies and give me the therapy I needed to develop healthier coping strategies. As it is, I do feel that my confidence was affected to the extent that my future career prospects were adversely affected. I’m 43 years old, and, to be honest, although I’ve worked for a long time, I’ve not had a proper career.

As it turned out, it wasn’t until a severe bout of Depression in my late 20s that I was given the help and therapy I needed to come to terms with the effects of the bullying.

To anyone going through this today, I’d say that first of all, have hope. I couldn’t have predicted when I was 13 that 30 years later, I’d have a happy life, with the best son ever and a long marriage to a good and loving man and a lot of longstanding, truly fabulous friends. Seek out the help that’s available, that I never had. There’s a whole list available here on the Anti-Bullying Alliance website if you can’t get support from teachers or family.

I really want the Coalition to get to grips with this issue, to come up with a strategy which ensures that children don’t suffer from violence and harassment which robs them not just of their school days but their future wellbeing and potential too. That’s why things like Anti-Bullying Week are so important.

8 Comments

Caron you write with a personal conviction, a story of pivotal importance.

The personal is not always political. But the political is usually personal.

Some thoughts. There is nothing weird about your eyes. Everyone has some feature more individual or particular, more rare or different. For weird read interesting, for strange think unusual.

We are all, or nearly all, the odd one out. At every stage we meet someone who we do not know the story of, but it may contain something out of the ordinary.

You do and have had a career. It is in politics. You do not get paid for it but you raise money for it and are involved in a party at a level considerable.

Now the strong thought for self reflection. Your experiences should make you a little more understanding of those of us who are concerned that identity politics, as the phrase is panned out in practice, is seeing characteristics, outward ones, first, rather than inner ones, character.

The greatest liberal mind,or hero, Martin Luther King, referred to the content of character not colour of skin.

If these appalling kids and worse, teachers, had seen that, you would not have been made to feel such hurt.

Caron, as Trump is showing us bullies carry on into later life and they always talk bull****. Nothing they said to you was true.
I was bullied at school too and after therapy because of my difficult childhood I realised that the bullies, nice middle class girls, had probably sensed my vulnerability. I’ve also noticed, from cases of extreme bullying that make the news, it’s often the prettiest girls who are picked on by other girls and told they are ugly.

This is a very sad read, Caron. I’m very sorry to hear what you had to endure and it must have taken a lot of courage for you to write about it.

As a former Head, to the best of my knowledge, all schools are now required to have an anti-bullying policy. How successfully they implement it is one of the criteria used by Ofsted when schools are reviewed and inspected. Certainly when I was a Head (in pre-Ofsted days) together with the staff we produced a school anti-bullying policy. In those days when there were difficulties we involved parents and, importantly, the local authority provided back up facilities. Since the Academy system was introduced this has become non-existent and has lead to great difficulties for victims and perpetrators alike.

What you say about the attitude of some of your teachers I find truly shocking. It should not have been tolerated by the Head. Where possible, parents should also be involved and have a role to play.

Commiserations!!!
Perhaps the suggestions below might be of some interest/help?
Bullying is to do with power and/or status.
Human beings are “hardwired” for the survival benefits for organised co-operation which involves power and/or status. Therefore we are prone to bullying. [T. Veblen is good on this point.]
Maybe “Toilet Skills” might help us. Because we eat, we must excrete! So we are taught skills and conventions about dealing with parps, pees and poohs! They do not always work but, generally, we have this unavoidable set demands under control.
Similarly, we might be wise and compassionate to teach and enable learning, theory and practice, about status, power and learning.
One school which was good at the prevention and management of bullying had fencing [swords!] lessons every week.
Another had LOTS of spoken language work, skills and fun plus a lot of time on drama skills etc. as well as performance skills including music.
Schools which did not seem to address bullying very well tended to be markedly hierarchical, concentrate on maths and [written] English.
There also seemed to be a correlation between the school being exciting and child appealing and a lower incidence of bullying.
One school, with not the easiest of intakes, achieved a raising of social and attitudinal benefits by encouraging roller skating during breaks!
P.S.
The primary schools cited above achieved noticeably high scores in SAT tests.

Thank you for such a moving article. Sadly most school’s policy on bullying is ‘We don’t have bullying at this school’. I suspect that people who endured a lot of that sort of behaviour when they were at school would avoid the teaching profession like a plague, and hence many teachers do not deal with the problem effectively as they did not suffer from it when they were at school. There needs to be a complete change of mind-set so that assault and criminal damage directed at children is treated as the criminal acts they actually are, rather than … ‘oh its just kids’.

There are schools in Bath, where bullies have not been controlled it seems. I expect you heard about an incident involving racist comments.
I know about one junior school, where a child quite young, had a cardigan cut and damaged. It appears that no one knows anything. Uniform, is not cheap to purchase, as the school offered to pay for the damaged item. As I said, parents can’t afford to replace cut uniform. The school does not seem happy to pay either. School’s must have control in their playground and classroom, and on school property.
I think Mrs. Hobhouse should be interested in the topic.
I was bullied at school, but then she did this to every one. My sister was bullied in junior school.
Schools are for education, not for those who feel they can cause harm and emotional trauma.
I’ve just written more comments on Twitter. In the USA, disabled students are singled out to be bullied.

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